The stain upon our family is only half effaced: I have sworn the death of the villain and his bastard, and I will keep my oath. “One genius in the family is enough. Spurlock slept on. But they were old enough to start remembering you as mother, and we cannot have that. His reputation was slightly tainted by his marriage to her mother, an exotic blue-eyed raven-haired beauty, a Gypsy doll with a clandestine heritage. ‘Hates doing the pretty. Collins, you can go now. Their subsequent conversation is outside the scope of our story. But what can we do? Here am I, fixed to respectability and this laboratory; you’re living at home. Chapter XVI THE DISCOMFITURE OF SIR JOHN Sir John looked from one to the other of the two sisters. “It is strange that we should have met Annabel,” she said. E.